God Particle Not Detected On A Separate Experiment

Researchers on the US Tevatron “atom smasher” at the Collider Detector at Fermilab (CDF) in Batavia, Illinois reported in April a tentative evidence that particles not predicted by the standard model had surfaced in collisions that produced a W boson.

Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, Main Ring and Main Injector as seen from the air.Image Credit: Fermilab, Reidar Hahn

A bump in the data collected by the CDF group reportedly pointed to the existence of an unidentified particle which could prove the existence of Higgs boson also known as the “god particle.”

However, independent checks from a separate experiment called DZero was not able to corroborate the findings, several international news sites reported on Friday, June 10, 2011.

“We do not see the signal. If it existed, we would see it. But when we look at our data, we basically see nothing. At this point I’d say the chances are 50-50 for the Higgs to exist at all,” ” Dmitri Denisov, staff scientist at Fermilab, was quoted saying.

“This is exactly how science works,” DZero co-spokesperson Stefan Söldner-Rembold reportedly said in a Fermilab news release. “Independent verification of any new observation is the key principle of scientific research. At the Tevatron, we have two experiments that, by design, can check each other.”

The result was said to represent a setback for scientists who have been following the search for the elusive particle.